


a journey (a dream of flight)

by zouwuu



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Doctor! Iwaizumi, M/M, aeronautical engineer! oikawa, the wind rises au, world war ii-era japan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:34:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27831613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zouwuu/pseuds/zouwuu
Summary: Tooru envisions the sky in multitudes, in layers of dream and reality.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Kudos: 4





	a journey (a dream of flight)

**Author's Note:**

> i am releasing this monster of an idea i've had ever since i watched haikyuu and subsequently fell in love with iwaoi. that was in... 2016? WOW where has the time gone lol
> 
> first line is inspired by birdcat's [bluefic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26222809)! there is no description that so astutely describes oikawa in relation to the sky

_ “Because people don't have wings, we look for ways to fly.” _

_ Furudate Haruichi _

_ Haikyuu!! _

Oikawa Tooru dreams of the sky in vivid blue: a color so monstrous, so encapsulating, he fears it may swallow him whole.

He knows he is asleep; he is on a hill he frequents in his dreams. He is laying down on a soft bed of brush, the undergrowth digging into his exposed skin not in a way that is uncomfortable, but rather in a familiar manner one can only experience from visiting the same place over and over again. He lifts his head — the sun is beginning to set, casting a wave of golden light across the plains, momentarily blinding as he blinks to adjust. Tooru looks down at the wide expanse of tall grass and wildflowers below, soaking in the sight of viridian and what he imagines morning dew to smell like in the made-up world of his mind.

In this dream world, he is not simply a boy with legs too short to reach the kitchen counter, voice high in pitch and not yet able to understand volume. Here, he is able to reconstruct and deconstruct curves of airplane carriers with his mind, imagining if he were to run his hands across the steel frame of his own creation, how the cool metal would feel against his fingers as he closes his eyes and bends the shape to his will.

He is not too sentimental to realize that his country is behind, though. He knows the wooden aircrafts Japan brings into war will burn easily, and that he may never get the chance to even procure a job in a field where people burn just as quickly. His mother warns him of climbing into the unknown and says that he is like Icarus, a boy with too much ambition flying straight into the sun while ignoring his wings — fragile and strewn together with bird feathers and molten wax — melting off his arms. But for tonight and the rest of his nights, he will hold onto this dream of azure skies as the wind rises in swells.

Digging his palms in the grass below, he pushes his body from the earth. No matter if it is a dream or not, he understands he is subject to the rules of gravity, and that his limbs are not wings meant to soar above the ground. Tooru brushes the residue off his sleep clothes and looks carefully at the horizon. Something feels different. The air feels like it is teeming with incredible sentiment Tooru has yet to experience. The best way he can describe it is the feeling of loss, or maybe the expectation that pieces once broken will be merged together as new.

He finds a silhouette of a figure amidst the foliage, a distinct shape of a tall man staring further into the plain. This is the new, and he yearns to uncover the secrets of this universe, unlimited by his age or lack of flight. He sprints down the hill, reveling in the crisp air pushing against his face as he gains leverage, the flapping of his loose sleep clothing in the wind. The one thing that is different, Tooru notices, is that he does not run out of breath as he would if he were awake. Time spent chasing after his sister and neighbors during childhood taught him the restraints the human body had, and how he wishes to lighten the load of bones and muscle so he can run without inhibition. Sweat does not furrow at his brow or at the base of his neck. He could run like this forever.

The young boy stops abruptly when he reaches the man, carrying the sounds of crunching and loud footsteps. Up close, the stranger is much older than Tooru, with gray streaking his hair on the back of his head. He whips his head around suddenly, facing Tooru, and the boy notices that though this man is not Japanese, he looks familiar.

The man has his hands in the pockets of his cotton pants, a flowy white dress shirt tucked in precariously. Around his neck, he wears a chain with a single golden ring hanging from the metal. He wears the ring like a weight, and Tooru wonders how significant the memories are attached to it. 

He turns around, looking at Tooru directly with foreign hazel eyes.

“Who are you?” The man has a curious look on his face; not unkind, but not trusting. He has a high nose bridge and deep-set eyes emphasized by dark circles. His blonde hair is receding in the front, but the severity of approaching a stranger in this dream is offset by the wrinkles under his eyes — a sign of kindness on an otherwise harsh face. He has the face of someone who has lived long and seen many things people would not have the pleasure of seeing in their lifetime; someone who has found joy, lost it, and is able to find it again.

“I am Oikawa Tooru.” He pauses for a second, pondering as to why a visitor has arrived so suddenly in between his normal escapades to this field. “I think this is supposed to be my dream.”

The man tilts his head in deliberation, thinking over this strange answer, and then laughs, loud and boisterous in a way that reminds Tooru of the bakery owner near his house. The owner was an older man who treated Tooru like his grandson, granting him meals of rice and savory mackerel whenever he got back from school, sneaking in little treats of milk bread whenever he performed well on a test or received praise from his teachers. In that bakery, he would watch the man mix flour and wet ingredients with a whisk, lifting up heavy loads of dough on his shoulders even though Tooru could see the gray in his hair, the protrusion of his collarbone, and the glassy look in his eyes old people usually got when they started relying on intuition rather than vision alone. He has not seen the owner since the war started a few years ago. He has not thought of him in a while, but here was a man that laughed just like him, as if it were a memory dug up from the impermanence of his own mind. 

“That’s funny,” he says, the corner of his mouth raised slightly in a half-smile. “I think this is my dream as well.” 

The man’s eyes look back out into the horizon, and Tooru squints against the bright rays of the sun to see what he is looking at. There is nothing but viridian for kilometers on end. There is nothing to look at. But the man continues to rest his eyes on the land ahead, clairvoyant in nature.

“I’m José Blanco,” he says after a nebulous pause, beckoning with a steady hand. “Come, young Japanese boy. I will show you my dream.”

_ What do men dream of when they’ve lived for so long _ , Tooru wonders as he follows Blanco’s long stride. He places his feet in the man’s imprints in the grass as he walks, each footprint easily twice the size of his own. He requires two steps to match the other’s single pace. Soon, he will turn seven. Will he grow to match the stride of this man by that time?

Blanco stops after an indiscernible amount of time. Tooru feels something foreboding, a calm before an inevitable storm that will result in damages he can never replace, both physically and mentally. It is how he felt when his father told him the restaurant had burned to the ground, because the owner had allegedly opposed the war. Something about unjust reasoning for colonialism on the mainland of Asia. Something his mother glared at his father for mentioning, before whispering solemnly at her son to never repeat those words.

“Look.” Blanco points to the fighter jets flying above their heads. The engines rumble fiercely, as if they are grinding up as much fuel and coal as possible to stay afloat in their own clouds of blackened pollution. The smell of gasoline is so pungent that Tooru wrinkles his nose.

“They went to bomb enemy cities,” the older man says wistfully. Blanco’s eyes follow the aircrafts as they stream into foreign cities, diving headfirst into buildings of brick and mortar, followed by the screeching of steel as the screws and bolts of the man’s work, livelihood, and prudent love are deconstructed before his very eyes. A persistent fire blazes through the wreckage and carnage, a cloud of smoke wafting lazily above, waiting for the old to be reborn anew.

“Half of the pilots will not make it back,” Blanco sighs. His eyes are weary from the weight of his inventions and the lives spent to send them in flight, and Tooru wonders if this is the burden of innovation in the shadow of warring nations. There is a pressure building in his chest, a pounding heart aching for people he does not know. “But the war is nearing its end. Come, Japanese boy,” Blanco waving ahead, already moving further down the plain. “I will show you my real dream.”

They walk amongst the tall grass in silence, words too heavy to be exchanged. There are no words that  _ can  _ be shared, for how would Tooru, a boy so young and inexperienced, provide any wisdom? Instead, he watches the back of Blanco’s head with a focus he usually reserves for his math lessons, and wonders if this is how he will appear to aspiring aeronautical designers when he is older. Somber, defeated, bones leaden with guilt.

They stop near a cliffside, and suddenly, Tooru feels a gust of wind on his back, and something changes. Perhaps it is Blanco’s shifting mood, paired with the rising sun in the west, that creates an atmosphere that palpably uplifts the subdued emotions from before. He turns to face the current, and is greeted with the sight of foreign faces in a grand voyager craft waving at him as the plane gains height from below. The broad, layered wings of the craft are the color of the cumulus clouds that appeared mid-day before the war — before bombings and the scent of decay and destruction filled the air. The body of the plane is a blue Tooru always associates with his dreams, because no sky in Sendai has matched the same vigor of his desires, an all-encompassing  _ want _ that stems from imagery born only in the depths of his mind. He saw the color in the magazine Blanco featured in, a proud Argentine blue with a sun in the middle of the country’s flag. Tooru has never been to Argentina, but he can visualize a land of the rising sun where the ocean reflects the same color of that magnificent blue. He can smell the clear breeze of new beginnings, and he wants to follow where it will take him.

The foreigners on the plane are joyous, raising their glasses of alcohol to Blanco as the aircraft moves to a slow halt in front of them. There is music playing, a strum of guitar and dozens of voices singing of nationalism to a country full of warmth and family.

A beautiful woman peeks her head out from the railing, shouting something in Spanish to Blanco as she smiles and waves enthusiastically, and his face breaks out into a wide grin. He looks the happiest Tooru has seen him, love and adoration etched into the wrinkles under his eyes.

_ Ah _ , Tooru thinks. Maybe he will grow up like this instead, with love and the thoughts of the people he calls home etched into his work.

“That is my wife,” Blanco says merrily. “Mi amor, mi vida, mi corazón.” 

His wife points into the plane and makes a questioning remark, to which Blanco nods and gives her a thumbs up. She disappears from view, and he turns to Tooru. “I moved from Argentina to Italy for work, because my country does not have many career opportunities in aeronautics at this time. Argentina is neutral in this war, but I wanted to design planes, so when the Italian government offered me a job, I accepted. I have not seen my family in 6 years, but I think about them every day. Every plane I have created in Italy, I have created with them in mind.”

A flimsy ladder built of rope and wood is thrown out of one of the entrances, clattering onto the dirt. Blanco begins climbing, the ladder swinging back and forth from his movements, but not once does he look concerned. He looks back at Tooru with a glimmer in his eye, almost as if he were saying:  _ ‘Come and see the pride and joy I’ve created with my own hands, surrounded by the memories of people I love.’ _

Tooru eyes the rope ladder warily, not wanting to haphazardly jump and fall off the edge, even if it is a dream. Inhaling sharply, he leaps and just barely manages to grab a rung with both hands, scrambling to position his feet on a lower bar. He sighs in relief, and begins the upward climb toward Blanco and his wife, who are waving encouragingly in his direction.

“Welcome, Tooru,” Blanco’s wife greets him at the summit. Up close, she is even more beautiful with her long, dark, curly hair tucked neatly behind a bandanna, all sharp cheekbones and bright hazel eyes that turn golden when the sun’s light catches on them. He can see how she’s aged, too, faded crow’s feet and wrinkles around her mouth that tell of a person who finds joy in life. She is the product of the love and care Argentina has given her in all forms: her family, her husband, and the beauty of the country itself.

Quickly, Tooru finds himself surrounded by Blanco’s relatives, each radiating with a pleasant aura he wants to bury himself in, like one would with a soft blanket on a cold winter day. They exchange pleasantries with Blanco, some men stopping to ruffle Tooru’s hair and women who coo at him in Spanish, pinching his cheeks. He reddens in embarrassment, because though he is used to attention given by aunties and uncles in his immediate family, this feels significantly more intimate, like he is intruding on something not meant for him.

Slowly, the crowd disperses to other parts of the plane, and Tooru is able to identify lounges, dining areas, and sleeping quarters on the aircraft. 

“After the end of the war,” Blanco says, appearing next to him after finishing his conversation with a man around his age, both embracing and laughing like life-long friends, “I am going to make this.”

He gestures to his grandiose dream, and Tooru soaks in the sight of it all.  _ What joy it must bring, _ he thinks,  _ to create out of love for one’s life. _

“Instead of bombs, this plane will carry passengers! How magnificent! I will set it along the Pacific where it will fly unbounded by the constraints of war. A tool of commodity and pleasure, no longer for the sake of sending pilots off on missions they will never return from.” Blanco smiles widely, and Tooru can’t help but stare at him in wonderment.

“I want to do that, too, Mr. Blanco,” he replies earnestly. “I want to design beautiful aircrafts like you! Please teach me how to do that!” 

Tooru bows suddenly, and Blanco laughs in delight. Patting the younger boy’s shoulder affectionately, he says: “When you are older and have finished your studies, we will meet again. But for now, sleep well, Tooru.”

A dream of flight is born in a kingdom of dreams, in the mind of the dreamer. Tooru awakens in the morning and tells his mother of his plans, and she smiles and tells him in due time, he will achieve what he wants. As he helps her ready for breakfast, he cannot clear his mind of the magnificent voyager aircraft, and wishes to build something even more stunning.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on twitter! @splendidily


End file.
